Question 1

What is a good reaction time?

Accepted Answer

In laboratory conditions a healthy adult reacting to a visual cue averages roughly 210–230 ms (Woods et al., 2015, n = 1,469). Browser tests read slower, because your display and mouse latency are inside the measurement and cannot be subtracted out. The number that actually tells you something is your own previous score on the same hardware.

Question 2

Do pro gamers really react in 150 ms?

Accepted Answer

No. That figure traces back to single self-reported clicks on livestreams, cherry-picked from many attempts. Peer-reviewed studies that test esports players properly find averages around 220–290 ms, and the most rigorous of them find no significant difference between professionals and trained athletes who don't play games at all. Reaction speed is not what separates elite players from everyone else.

Question 3

Why is my phone score so much worse than my computer score?

Accepted Answer

Because a large share of what is being measured is the equipment. Touch input is sampled on its own schedule and reported later than a wired mouse reports a click, and on a test this short that gap is often bigger than the gap between two people. Our leaderboard has a mobile filter for exactly this reason.

Question 4

How does reaction time change with age?

Accepted Answer

Simple reaction time — the kind this test measures — stays roughly flat until about 50 and then slows by around half a millisecond per year. Choice reactions, where you have to pick between responses, start declining in your mid-twenties. A large study of StarCraft II players found the same pattern inside a gaming population.

Question 5

How can I improve my reaction time?

Accepted Answer

Sleep is the biggest lever and has the best evidence behind it. After that: warm up before you measure, kill distractions, and take the test under the same conditions each time so the number stays comparable. Practice will make you better at this test — be sceptical of anyone selling you more than that.

Question 6

Why average five attempts instead of taking my best one?

Accepted Answer

Because a best-of-five rewards luck. A mean is much harder to fluke, but it is also unforgiving: one distracted attempt at 400 ms drags the average by roughly 30 ms and there is no dropping it. If a round goes badly, finish it and run the test again.

Reaction Time